Sana Mcmurray
Lab Notebook
31-8-2016
In class we read two articals. The first article we read talked about how synthetic biology could possibly improve the world of medicines and science. Before it can begin to impact these fields and before the technology involved with synthetic biology is fully able to function, there needs to be a focus on the saftey of it all. I found that the second artical was quite intriguing. The article introduced the idea of expressing the gene for haemolysin E and bacteriophage lysis protien gene to kill cancer cells. They did an experiment on mice with colorectal tumor metastases and it turned out that after bacterial lysis tumor cells had been killed. This genetic manipulation has not quite reached its full potential and is still an ongoing process. After class we recieved an article we were to read on our own. That artical was about the genetic modification of human embryos in China.
1-9-2016
Today in class Sean of open bio labs talked a bout what synthetic biology is. Sean had a discussion with the class about iGEM and what it is. It was very nice getting and inside view of someone who was involved with iGEM and who had the experience that he had. We aslo talked about things that should happen before we start on a project.
7-9-2016
In class lab notebook prob;ems were worked on.
8-9-2016
Today we talked about DNA and about the structure of the deoxirybose, base pairs, and the phosphate groups. We talked about the different types of base pairs, purines (hexagon and pentagon shaped carbon molacular structures) and pyrimidines (only pentagon) and how they are held together by hydrogen bonds. After we talked about this double helix, we look on the iGEM website for projects we may like to continue or to get ideas from. In class we read about one to get an idea or visual on how the projects are written down and how ours could turn out.
12-9-2016
In class we talked about supercoiling which was super interesting. One of the reasons that super coiling happens is because DNA can not maintain too much torsion and so the supercoiling releases stress. We talked about positive supercoiling where the coil moves up and to the left and what it does is add energy. Negative supercoiling is the most common type of super coiling found in organisms becasue it decreases enerrgy and strain and also makes it easier to open up the DNA to copy it. We learned about how humans don't actually have gyrace but instead of that they have topoisomerase 1. All the lies...
14-9-2016
On this day we were to bring an annotated bibliography of three sources that correlates with our project. We also reviewed DNA transcription and replication
15-9-2016
Project proposals were discussed .
19-9-2016
We had a small quiz DNA super-coiling.
22-9-2016
We discussed DNA replication and went over the quiz.
10-10-2016
Participant was absent
24-10-2016
We went over a presentation for an experiment that we will do with Peabody 8th graders the 26 of October. The experiment was extracting our DNA from our cheek cells. We first swished salt water in our mouth then put it in test tubes. After that we added around 1-2 ml of lysis solution to our tubes. Then after a couple of times slowly turning the them upside down and right side up we added ethanol. We did this by dripping it down the side of the inside of the tube so that it sat on top of the lysis and salt water solution. We waited for 10 minutes before extracting our DNA
26-10-2016
We gave a fantastic presentation to the 8th graders. The class was separated into three groups( Acree, Nico, and I all had our own group). My group of kids all successfully followed the directions and ended up with results.